Bergeron writes about local, state & national topics, as well as other matters of interest.

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Legislature Disses New Jersey Voters, Again

Governor Chris Christie did his very best under the circumstances. Not being able to push through his proposal for a voter-approved constitutional amendment with a hard spending cap, he settled for the next best thing – a questionable compromise that will be altered with more loopholes by successive legislatures and governors.

Notice that I wrote “will be altered,” not could be.

I won’t even bother in this post to outline the elements of the proposed legislative compromise which will be considered by the New Jersey Assembly on Monday and which is likely to be approved and signed into law by Governor Christie – because it doesn’t matter.

The real issue is that New Jersey voters were denied the right to initiative and referendum as originally proposed by the Governor: Simply put, we were all cut off from Christie’s plan to decide for ourselves in November whether or not there should be a hard cap on spending in this, the Garden State, where the green comes cheap.

And we have the Democratically controlled legislature to thank for that.

If there is a single mortal fear running through the sinews and synapses of elected officials, it’s having the checkbook taken out of their hands. OK, that doesn’t apply to all of them, I know, but it obviously applies to enough so that the New Jersey legislature had the power to block Christie’s original proposal for a Trenton-proof constitutional amendment with a hard spending cap.

And that’s why the details of the new law which will go into effect don’t matter: After this governor is gone, the spending binge will continue.